Eskom is struggling to make ends meet and is asking government to help debt-collect from Soweto.

Eskom, South Africa’s national power utility, says that Soweto is one of its major payment defaulters, owing the company around R15 billion.

According to a report by Sowetan Live, this amount is equal to what almost 60 municipalities combined also owed the utility.

Eskom needs the cash

At this moment in time, Eskom is attempting to gather all its outstanding rands and cents from defaulting municipalities. The company has said that balancing the financial books is now a matter of utmost urgency.

And, naturally, it should be. Eskom, the country’s largest and most vital state owned enterprise, is on the verge of financial and operational collapse. Recently, the utility announced that its coal reserves were dwindling, prompting an urgent contingency plan to keep the nation’s lights on.

Other issues include gross operational mismanagement, billions of rands wasted due to ‘irregular expenditure’, mass industrial action undertaken by disgruntled employees and the failure to collect what is owed to the power supplier.

Soweto residents resisting prepaid meters

In fact, so eager has Eskom been to recoup cash, that it’s threatened to shut off entire municipalities from the electrical grid. Yet, despite these feisty threats, the national power supplier can’t seem to get Soweto to cough up the money owed.

Khulu Phasiwe, spokesperson for Eskom, confirmed that Soweto residents were refusing the installation of prepaid meters, opting instead to connect to the grid illegally, saying:

“The solution for Soweto needs urgent government intervention. The problem is getting worse. We disconnect people who don’t pay, but some work with our technicians to reconnect themselves.”

Phasiwe stated that while Eskom provides about 180 000 households with electricity, the townships principal debt stands at R7 billion but has accumulated interest of a further R8 billion.

The argument coming from Soweto locals, represented by Cleopatra Shezi, the secretary of the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee, is that they cannot afford to pay for electricity, hence the resistance to the installation of prepaid meters.

According to the report, only 4000 households have prepaid electricity meters installed.